Move over, Disney. Snow White and her fairy tale mates are trading their shiny castles and glass carriages for cold, unforgiving landscapes filled with revenge and violence in upcoming films such as Snow White and the Huntsman and Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. On TV, the tributes include Grimm, a show about a Grimm descendant, a detective who battles age-old fairy tale villains.
With this surge in dark and brooding modern fables, it seems as if entertainment execs have drunk the same magic potion. This year marks the 200th anniversary of the first collection from the best-known purveyors of the genre, the Grimm brothers, and their tales continue to fascinate us. [...]
Just how gruesome were they?Snow White
In the 1812 version of this classic, the evil queen is actually Snow White’s mother – the Grimms changed this in subsequent versions aimed more at children. The idea that a mother would try to kill her child was deemed too upsetting – although other grisly bits remained. The queen asks to eat the lungs and liver of Snow White after the huntsman kills her. And when Snow White and her prince are married, the evil queen is forced to dance in poker-hot iron shoes until she drops dead.
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The Globe and Mail